Читать книгу Longy - Booze, Brawls, Sex and Scandal - Sean Long - Страница 13

At the age of 11, I went to St Joseph’s Comprehensive school in Horwich, near Bolton. It was a Catholic school where all the kids from my Catholic primary school went, even though it was miles away. But it was a nice enough school and I had some good times there. The only problem was that when it came to sport it was 100 per cent football; they didn’t play any rugby. Thankfully, I had a decent left peg on me and played on the left wing for the school football team and for the Bolton Under-13s.

But for me, football wasn’t a patch on rugby and playing for St Jude’s always came first. If ever a game of football clashed with rugby, football lost out. Most of my rugby mates at St Jude’s went to Deanery High School in Wigan and played for the school team. It was really frustrating that I couldn’t play for my school and I felt I was losing out on the extra training and match experience. My dad agreed and said it was important I represented my school in order to develop my game and further my career. A lot of the scouts were going to schools games, looking for talent, and if I was going to make it as a player, I couldn’t afford not to be seen. So after two happy years at St Joseph’s, I left at the beginning of the third year and went to Deanery High. It was no mean feat, getting into that school. Deanery was Protestant and I’m a Catholic. But Dad spoke to the headmaster, Mr Williams, who, fortunately, was a massive rugby fan. The school had the best rugby league team around and he wanted to keep it that way. My dad said I was the best player they’d ever have. It was a big boast but Mr Williams swallowed it and he let me in.

My dad took my rugby very seriously and he was very strict with me. A lot of my mates at that time had paper rounds or milk rounds and they always had a few quid. But Dad wouldn’t let me have a job. He said getting up that early every morning would make me too tired for rugby. He was right, but at the time I thought he was a right bastard.

When I was 15, Mum and Dad split up. I’d kind of known things weren’t right for ages. Dad worked long hours and then he’d be training at the gym or coaching at St Jude’s. He was never at home. I felt sorry for Mum and could see them drifting apart. They started sleeping and sitting in separate rooms, which I knew wasn’t right, and they were having bust-ups all the time. One afternoon, all four of us were in the house when the shit really hit the fan and we found out Mum had been having an affair. We had two phones and Mum was talking to her new bloke on one while dad was in the other room. Dad picked up the phone and heard them talking. He had no idea Mum was seeing someone else until then. Karl and me were upstairs at the time and it all kicked off in the kitchen. We could hear what they were saying and went down. Then my mum said she was going, and my dad was saying to her ‘get out, get out’. Then Mum looked at Karl and me and said: ‘Come on you two, you’re coming with me.’ I looked at her and then at my dad and said: ‘No, I’m stopping here.’ Mum was crying and instead of telling us, she asked this time: ‘Are you coming, are you coming?’ She was expecting us to go, after all everyone goes with their mum, don’t they? But, much as I loved her, I said I wanted to stay where I was.

When Mum moved out, she went to live in a flat with her new guy, Tony. She was happy and I could see that. Tony’s a sound bloke and they’re made for each other. They’re still together now. At the time, I could see my folks were better off apart but our Karl didn’t take it too well. He was only 11 and it hit him really badly. He rebelled at school after that and got himself in a load of bother.

Because Dad was working long hours for the flagging firm, I had to help our Karl out a lot. I suppose I became a kind of surrogate dad to him. All the teachers at school knew what had gone on and they would come to me and ask me to help Karl. He did daft things that were obviously going to get him into trouble; I don’t know whether they were cries for help or what. At the Deanery they had this thing where you had to back your textbooks to protect the covers. I was called into the Head’s office one day where he had Karl and one of his books that he’d backed with pages from a porno magazine. He asked me what I thought and I took one look at our Karl and said: ‘Nice tits.’ Needless to say it didn’t go down well, but me and my bro had a laugh after our mutual bollocking.

We used to sneakily nip up and see Mum and it was hard at the time. But even back then, I knew it was for the best. My dad is a bit of a crazy character and he dated a few girls, but he found it hard. I felt sorry for him because he’d get up at six in the morning and work a long shift while still keeping on top of all the housekeeping stuff. But it had its good points. Because Dad was out of the house hours before I had to go to school, it was pretty much up to me whether or not I bothered going. I’d wake up and think ‘fuck Maths’ or ‘fuck Science’ and I’d just roll over and go back to sleep. I’d pick and choose whether to go to school and my dad didn’t know. The fact was, I knew rugby was going to be my life and so did Dad. I was going to play professionally and that was that.

Me and my best mate Richard Owen – who everyone calls by his surname – never did our homework. It was sort of an unwritten rule we had between us that neither of us did it so that when we got done off the teacher, we got done together. After all, a bollocking shared is a bollocking halved. I remember one time in fourth year Geography we were meant to hand in a quiz sheet we’d been given. I think I’d made a paper aeroplane with mine on the way home from school the week before. As far as I was concerned, I was playing rugby most nights so didn’t have time for school stuff. And even if I did (which, to be honest, I did) knowing about mountains and glaciers and shit like that was not going to make me a better player.

Anyway, we all went into the lesson, as usual, a few minutes before the teacher got there, and I said to Owen: ‘Have you done your homework?’ It was a rhetorical question because I knew he was just going to say no. But the bloody Judas started laughing and waving his sheet and said he’d copied the answers off someone at lunchtime! I couldn’t believe it and I was fuming at the sly bastard. We got to our desks and he was teasing me with it from across the class. So, while everyone else was getting their books and stuff out of their bags, I got up, snatched it off him and started eating it. He was grabbing at me, trying to get it out of my mouth when the teacher, Mr Parkinson, came into the room. He saw me scrapping with Owen and he shouted: ‘What’s that? What’s that in your mouth, Long?’ I started laughing, which with my mouth full just meant snorting through my nose, and spat it out onto the floor. Then Owen, pretending to be all conscientious and gutted that someone was eating the work he’d spent ages on, said: ‘He’s eaten my homework, Sir.’ Mr Parkinson went mental. He stormed over and dragged me off my seat while Owen was looking on, laughing to himself. But Mr Parkinson grabbed him as well, took us both outside and gave us the biggest bollocking ever. Other teachers came out of their classes to see what was going on, it was that bad. But when they saw it was us two getting it, they all just shrugged as if to say ‘fair enough’ and went back to their classes. I had to pay one of my regular visits to the Head’s office that day. I was sent to see him so often that he recognised my knock.

The school toilets are not just for pissing in – they are for pissing about in. There were about five of us in the toilets one dinnertime and one of the lads started flicking water. It soon escalated to a full-on water fight and before we knew it we were all drenched and the place was flooded. The caretaker heard the commotion and came storming in. She was called Mrs Tickle, but don’t let the funny name fool you into thinking she was the happy type. She was a grouchy old thing and she dragged us out of the toilets, lined us up in the corridor and railroaded us. Nobody really took her seriously because she didn’t have any authority, but that didn’t stop her acting like she was in the Gestapo.

She got to the first lad, Chris Holden, and said: ‘Right, you’re all going to see the headmaster, I want your name.’ So Chris, just being cheeky, went: ‘Mr Holden.’ Mrs Tickle barked: ‘It is not Mr Holden, it is Master Holden.’ And so, she worked her way along the line and everyone followed suit: ‘Master Owen’, ‘Master Long’ etc. She got to Danny Stapleton (a sharp-witted lad) at the end and asked: ‘And what’s your name?’ Quick as a flash he answered: ‘Mr Bates’. So, right on cue, Mrs Tickle said: ‘It is not Mr Bates, it is Master Bates.’ We were still laughing when we arrived at the Head’s office.

‘What are you lot here for?’ asked Mr Williams. He turned to me and said: ‘I should change the name on that door to Long!’ Mrs Tickle was stood next to us, her arms folded and her face looking cross. No one dared speak at first, for fear of bursting out laughing. Finally, Owen told the story and when he ended it with: ‘And then Mrs Tickle said “it’s not Mr Bates, it’s Master Bates…”’ we all erupted into howls of laughter. You could see the Head was dying to laugh; I reckon if Mrs Tickle hadn’t have been there, he’d have wet himself.

As you might have gathered, I didn’t take my school career at all seriously. I knew I was going to be a rugby player and that’s all that mattered; I had a one-track mind. My attitude was daft really because if it went tits up I’d have been knackered. People knew I had a talent but there’s lots of lads like me with ability who don’t make it, either through injury or just by not developing as expected. I should have hedged my bets by studying a bit but, for me, going to school was about seeing my mates and chatting up girls.

Speaking of girls, one bonus of having a dad who was always working or training and a mum who lived elsewhere was being able to bring lasses home without getting any earache. But despite having our house at my disposal for carnal activities, I ended up losing my virginity at my best mate Owen’s gaff.

We were all 15 and it was the Deanery Christmas party at a club in Wigan called Maxine’s. The school had hired the place for the night, so obviously there was no booze behind the bar. Me, Owen and the two girls we were seeing had all been building up to the Christmas do as the night we’d all do it. Owen and me were both prepped up and had two johnnies each in our wallets, ready for some serious action. I’d seen loads of pornos so was quietly confident I would perform well. After the party, we went back to Owen’s and it was straight down to business. Owen went: ‘Right, Longy, I’m in my room and you’re in my brother’s room.’ And so I went up the stairs with Cathy, exuding the air of a lad who was ready to give her the jump of her life. It was too late to tell Owen – who already had a couple of notches on his bedpost – that I was getting nervous. We did the deed on Owen’s brother’s single bed and it was a right let down. I realised that being good at sex on my own didn’t necessarily mean I’d be good when someone else was involved! I didn’t know what to expect and half-thought it was going to be some magical thing that would make me feel somehow different afterwards, like I’d evolved. It didn’t help that the condom split at one point, meaning my head was in the shed for ages afterwards, wondering if I’d have a sprog to contend with nine months down the line.

As I was having my awkward fumble with Cathy, Owen was in the room next door and it sounded like there was a porn shoot going on in there. He was the most well-endowed lad in our school and clearly knew what to do with his gift. Screams of ‘YES! YES!’ and the sound of bedsprings moving to Owen’s experienced rhythm were enough to put anyone off – let alone a nervous virgin like me. The only reaction I got from my girl was a couple of moans, and they were not moans of pleasure.

Despite our disappointing first go at sex, Cathy and me got along well and started going steady. She lived in a really nice area in Winstanley and if I was rugby training after school, I’d catch the bus up there and see her afterwards. A couple of weeks into our relationship, I had two surprises in my bag to show off to her. First, I had won a trophy at rugby and second, I had in my bag a porn video given to me at lunch break by my mate Closey. He said it was the best one he’d ever seen – quite a compliment from a lad who must have seen hundreds – and I thought I’d see if Cathy was up for watching it with me. I arrived at her parents’ posh four-bed detached house, gave her a kiss hello, showed her my trophy and stuck it on the sideboard with the video, which I reminded myself to watch later. We listened to music in Cathy’s room and then went downstairs for some tea with her mum and dad. Afterwards, I said bye to everyone, grabbed by bag and sprinted off to get the bus home. It was only as I got close to our house and thought about showing the trophy to my dad that I realised it was still on the sideboard in Cathy’s front room… along with the porno!

Luckily, Closey had recorded the film over an old Deanery school rugby game, meaning it was just a plain VHS tape like the ones everyone used to record stuff off the telly. I thanked God that it wasn’t an original version bought from a sex shop, with a cover depicting its graphic, hardcore contents. I assured myself that I’d simply ring Cathy in the morning and ask her to bring the trophy and the tape to school with her. No one – especially her well-to-do, straight-laced parents – would be any the wiser.

I got home and watched TV with Dad and our Karl. About an hour later, there was a loud knock at the door and Dad went to answer it. ‘This is your son’s video,’ ranted Cathy’s dad, brandishing the tape. ‘It’s porn and it’s disgusting.’ He then handed it over, along with my trophy and Dad – who couldn’t have been less bothered – just said ‘Oh right, cheers’ and watched him and his wife storm off to their car. It turned out that Cathy’s folks, both rugby fans, had seen ‘Deanery v Hull’ written on the label and decided to play it. They got what they expected for the first few minutes until it suddenly cut away from school kids running around to a full-on, anything goes skin flick. I saw it afterwards and it was a really bad one, featuring positions you wouldn’t think possible and some eye-watering sadomasochism thrown in for good measure. Prior to watching that, I don’t think Cathy’s mum and dad had seen anything more risqué than Bergerac. They were fuming and they banned Cathy from seeing me. Of course, being banned from seeing each other just made us stronger and we continued going out for a few more months before eventually splitting up when we both got a bit bored of each other.

Once the losing-my-virginity box was ticked, there was still an important rite of passage I’d yet to experience – getting drunk! And it turned out to be another rather embarrassing episode. Shortly after splitting up with Cathy, I went with Owen and a few of the lads to a party hosted by a girl from school we all called Big Karen. Her parents were away at the time and the place was a state when they got back. We got one of the older lads to go to the off licence for us and we each bought a bottle of Merrydown cider and a can of lager. It’s all a bit of a blur but I recollect drinking all my booze before we got to the party, followed by some punch while we were there. What I do remember vividly is waking up at Owen’s house in the early hours of the following morning having pissed the bed. I began to wonder what it was about the beds in Owen’s house and me making a bloody pillock of myself!

But while my performance on the booze and babes front was below par, when it came to rugby, everything was going great. I had success with St Jude’s on the club front, Deanery High at schoolboy level and representative honours with Wigan town teams, the County and North West Counties sides.

By May 1992, I was 15 and I’d finally caught up with the other lads physically. I’d spent a couple of years wondering when I was ever going to get bigger but by ’92, I’d filled out, got hairy bollocks and, boy, was I rapid. I’d never been slow but I suddenly had some proper pace. That year, Deanery High swept the board. At our age group we’d won Wigan Schools League, the Wood Cup, the Wigan and District League Shield and were North West Counties English School Champions. And the following year we did it all over again. In the English Schools Final at Wilderspool, Warrington, we beat Leigh’s Bedford School 24-16. I was on top of my game that day, scoring a hat-trick of tries and grabbing a personal points tally of 18. And then to cap it all, me and my St Jude’s mate Keiron ‘Kez’ Cunningham were selected to play for the England Under-16s against the French Cadets at a ground I would come to know so well: Knowsley Road, St Helens.

The big break I’d dreamed of came when I signed for Wigan. I was 15 but it wasn’t made public until I was 16, when I left school. At one time I thought I was never going to get spotted. While scouts from Warrington and Wigan picked off other lads, I was overlooked. I knew I was a decent player – better than others who were being signed – and it was really frustrating. Then a bloke called Keith Mills, who was working at Wigan at the time, spoke to the scouts there and said: ‘You’re missing the best one, he’s called Sean Long and he plays stand-off at St Jude’s.’

One of them came to see me and said: ‘He’s too small.’ But then another scout, Johnny Jackson, came and watched me in a game against Widnes St Marie’s. I scored two tries and set up about three so Johnny asked me to go down to Central Park for a chat. He said they were looking at offering me a contract and I was ecstatic. But nothing was definite yet.

Being the wheeler-dealer he is, my dad pulled a fast one. He rang Wigan up and said we had a meeting with Dougie Laughton, the coach at Leeds, and blagged them that I was going to take a look round. I was never going to sign anything but Wigan didn’t know that. They got me straight down and offered me a deal, £18,000 over three years. On Dad’s advice, I turned it down and walked away. I remember thinking it was a huge gamble but it paid off. They upped the deal by a couple of grand and an extra year. Dad said: ‘Always turn down the first offer on the table. You need to look after Number One.’ And he’s right.

I was still only 15, so I carried on playing for St Jude’s. But the following year, when my birthday arrived, Wigan announced my signing and I was the happiest 16-year-old on the planet. I’d always told anyone who’d listen that one day I’d pull on a cherry and white shirt; it was my dream and it came true. Wigan chairman Jack Robinson said that my arrival was on a par with when the club had captured Shaun Edwards. That was praise indeed.

I started as an apprentice. Back then it was tied into YTS, the youth training scheme, so the government coughed up part of the money. You got paid £35 a week for training during the week and on top of that, you got your match money. If you played for the academy it was £35, if you played for the reserves you got £90 and if you played for the first team you pocketed between £400 and £450. It all built up from there. I played a few academy games and then went straight into the reserves so I was bringing home good money. Sometimes I played for both and was bringing home more than my dad! When I started for Wigan I gave Dad £15 a week board, but when I began bringing in more than him, he suggested I gave him £50. I declined the offer – after all, Dad’s always told me to look after Number One!

By the time I was 17, I looked old enough to get into all the pubs and clubs and I was living the dream. I bought a car – a Corsa GSi flying machine – and loads of posh togs and I was out all the time. I went out a lot in Wigan with my old mates but when I wasn’t with them, my going out pal was Wes Cotton, a fellow apprentice at Wigan who went on to become a great player and a very pretty fashion model! Wes and me hung out with some of the senior lads like Martin Offiah, and we all went to the famous Hacienda in Manchester most weekends. Like I said, I was living the fucking dream!

Martin was a great bloke and when we did our speed sessions in training he’d do it with us, even though we were just the YTS lads. I’d have races with him and he always won. He was as fast as anyone who’s ever played the game. I would love to see him and flying machine Darren ‘Alby’ Albert in a race.

Shortly after my 18th birthday, Wigan asked me to sign a new contract. At the time, there was a rugby league war going on between Super League and the National Rugby League. Wigan said that if I renewed my contract with them for the Super League I’d get a loyalty bonus of £20,000. That’s right, twenty bloody grand! The answer was a loud ‘YES!’ The same amazing deal was given to Craig Murdoch, Kris Radlinski and Simon Houghton. They probably spent theirs wisely, investing in property or stocks and shares. My cash went on booze and birds.

In fact, that £20,000 went to my head a bit and I went a bit crazy. You can read about the worst bits in the next chapter.